Professor Spence

Man, do I like the sound of that. Official or not, warranted or not, it's what I was called today during the first meeting of English 2 at Brooklyn College. I'm teaching it with another instructor (well, technically he's teaching it and I'm copying him, as a good T.A. should, but I'll get to lead some of the classes later on in the semester). We have about 25 students. Today, we asked them in class to write a sort of informal academic autobiography—and, after reading the pile of them, I'm even more excited to work with everyone. They're a diverse group: from the Dominican Republic, Trinidad and Tobago, China, Ecuador, Canada, and right here in Brooklyn. They're interested in being physician's assistants, nurses, businessmen, teachers, political activists, TV anchors, psychologists. (No one said, "I want to be a writer!" Hmmm....One of our jobs in the course is to make them more comfortable with words, to make the writing process actually pleasurable.) I spoke in front of the class for about 4 minutes. (Baby steps, right?) They were, on the whole, honest and endearing and serious and sometimes funny.

It's a nice place to be: I'm a student of writing and now a student of teaching, but at the same time I sort of get to be a writer and a teacher. Nothing like on-the-job training! My co-instructor is much more experienced than I am, but he's been totally up for letting me take on as much as I want. Even though it's a little bit intimidating, it's also so exciting. I hope I can help the kids learn (and love learning), help them become more comfortable with the whole writing thing. And maybe I'll get to head up my own class someday soon. It was one of my goals when I decided to go to grad school in the first place, so today was the first (baby) step.

In the meantime, I'm happy being Professor Spence. Whatever my qualifications, I'll take it!